User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-1432718-20190110051925

My two cents (or maybe I should say six cents since I have three main points to make):

The following sentence comes from The Doctor's grandmothers:

"According to the Thirteenth Doctor, the Doctor had seven grandmothers in their youth."

This is extremely misleading. "The Doctor" is singular, "grandmothers" is plural; and yet the "their" goes with the singular noun. Are/were the grandmothers in their youth? This kind of sentence is why I adamantly oppose the so-called "singular they", no matter how acceptable some in the field of grammar consider it. And honestly, after more than a decade of teaching grammar, I've never seen it used this way.

The truth is, this wiki is not for us. Most wikis are edited by probably less than 10% of the people who visit. That's why some of our policies seem to make no sense - they are aimed at the majority, that is, the readers of the wiki. We have a lot of knowledge about the DWU but I think many editors fail to understand that most viewers of this wiki do not have that detailed knowledge. Confusing syntax and grammar should be the last thing we want to see on the wiki.

Lastly, User:Amorkuz has cited T:DISCUSS as a reason to ignore a new user's posts above. However, that is taking the policy to a (very unwelcoming) extreme. My experience is that we have a lot of new users come to the forums first, probably because they want to engage in discussion about Doctor Who. It's important to make sure these new users feel welcome here and help them understand how the wiki works.